Author and Friend

My name is Andria Layton. I am a 22 year old college student. I am sure you are wondering why you should trust me to give you an objective view of the culture of Pro ANA. If you hear me out, I will tell you a little bit about myself, as well as the research I have conducted.

I grew up in the lower class, with parents filled with good intentions. Unfortunately, good intentions do not always make a great parent. I love them unconditionally, but it can not go ignored that some of that played apart in my diagnosis of anorexia. I spent years of my life struggling, and truthfully this is not a struggle that ever disappears entirely. When I was 13 I found myself on a Pro ANA website, and I was enthralled.

From 13 to 16 I called myself Pro ANA. I destroyed the relationships in my life and watched everything fall apart around me. The only solace I was able to find was within the community of Pro ANA. There was support and love and ultimately acceptance. For the first time, people supported me regarless of the decisions I made regarding my disorder.

Now of course, this has its downsides. This also means that the unhealthy decisions are supported, so when I was on a downward slope, I was bound to only get worse. Eventually, at 17, my dad was heartbroken to finally realize how much trouble I was in. He began doing everything he could to help me recover, and I was hospitalized and transported to a recovery center. I was 5'2 and 70 lbs. I was lucky to recover without full relapse, and be able to recognize all of the great and awful things that I learned through Pro ANA culture.

Now, this doesn't seem so objective, does it? Let me assure you that experience alone does not make me an authority.  In fact, I am no authority at all.  What I wish to do is allow you to scroll through my posts and my analysis in order to form your own opinion.  But I have more than just my experience to back me up. I decided to begin research on this culture, and I filtered through bacoodles of academic articles. Now these articles are almost all well written and established. They aren't wrong in what they assess. Unfortunately many of them choose to only focus on one part of the culture that Pro ANA breeds. There are articles about the language used in forums, ( This article focuses more on language and chat rooms. )and there are articles about the websites as static entities ( Here is an article about the websites and their content. ). I don't want to tell you that these articles aren't important, they are! Some even do a great job assesing the culture as a whole.  However, it is impossible to assess the community of Pro ANA by only looking at half of the culture they have created.

In my humble opinion, Pro ANA as a community and culture can only be fully understood by assessing the dynamic between the websites and the content and information they hold, as well as the members of the community themselves and how they thrive through chat rooms and forums. 

So, if you have made it this far into my first post, thank you. I hope that I have convinced you that I am a reliable source with an objective view. I want this to be an open an honest blog that thoroughly analyzes and informs the general public of truth behind the online community of Pro ANA.